Giving up a walk is more shameful than giving up a hit. Nibbling at the edge of the zone is cowardice; the Seattle Mariners' starting rotation generally understands this fact and acts accordingly. Giving up a walk-off walk is 10 times more shameful than giving up a walk-off hit, even if that hit is a grand slam. While the Houston Astros' Bryan Abreu surely understood this fact Wednesday night, he had already thrown 29 pitches across seven batters before committing his shameful 30th. That's not what you want, especially if the guy at the plate hit a grand slam in the previous inning.
Randy Arozarena, meanwhile, had taken it upon himself to make Mariners color commentator Dave Valle happy. Prior to the eighth inning, Seattle was on track to have a repeat of Tuesday night's game, and not just in the Luis Castillo of it all. The offense was ineffective, reproducing the lack of results that had spurred Valle, in the game prior, to espouse his beliefs on the importance of hitting with runners in scoring position. His thesis was true but only in the trivial sense: All the great teams do it. With the bases loaded, Arozarena did it, turning a 5-0 game into a 5-4 game. It also improved his 1-for-11 record this season with runners in scoring position to 2-for-12.
When Arozarena came up again in the ninth, he didn't have to hit a grand slam. He didn't have to do much of anything. The most important events occurred before Arozarena even came up to bat: a chain of singles, Julio Rodríguez breaking his 0-for-10 streak with runners in scoring position with a game-tying double, and a Mitch Garver walk to load the bases. It would've been poetic (and incredible) for Arozarena to hit another grand slam, but instead he worked five Abreu fastballs to a full count, made a faint dodging motion at a slider that missed way up, and took the opportunity to pimp the hell out of his game-winning walk. The Mariners won 7-6 instead of 10-6, but the level of emotional harm was about equal.
As far as walk-off walks go, earning one with a full count is the most impressive. The walk-off walk itself is a delicacy, and not just for the pleasing rhythm of the term. It takes a very particular set of circumstances to happen, which makes it just rare enough. There were just seven walk-off walks last season. There have been 520 walk-off walks in the integration era of baseball, so roughly two for each no-hitter in the same timespan. A walk-off walk satisfies the low-hanging fruit of literalism. It's the sort of material that would spawn a still-kicking internet phenomenon of "shrimp alert," with a funky little video of a shrimp walking. Look at him go.
In the interest of further historical context, there's actually a more shameful way to pull off a walk-off walk than what occurred last night. Out of those 520 instances, Baseball-Reference lists six times when a walk-off walk occurred without the bases loaded. All of these had a runner on third; all of them ended with a wild pitch. (There are also 35 times when a game-ending walk was not a walk-off walk, but those have a more boring explanation: a shortened game where the last play just happened to be a walk.) Abreu can take a little solace in the fact that it could've been worse.
The Mariners join the Cleveland Guardians, who accomplished the feat on Tuesday, as the first two teams to walk-off walk in 2025. For everyone but the Astros and Chicago White Sox, that means two straight days of shrimp. And if you factor in Barry Petchesky, that makes three.
